Have you ever heard someone struggle with a word like ‘street’, or ‘ask’ or ‘specific’? Perhaps you have become comfortable with speakers who neglect the endings of words like ‘insists’ and ‘asked’ in a setting where they should be on their p’s and q’s.

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You cannot overlook faulty speech habits if your goal is to achieve higher literacy. Whether a speaker is a newcomer to American English or a native, at some point their language skills are acquired from their environment. When the environment is academic or professional, careful speech awareness should be the focus.

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Careful speech adheres to the standards of pronunciation and enunciation, as described in dictionaries. if you look up the alphabetic spelling of a word in American heritage dictionary, for example, you will see its phonetic spelling in brackets /  / along certain super features, such as accentuation and syllabication.  These descriptions provide a guide to speaking a language with uniformity and comprehension. ​

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Articulatory phonetics promotes an understanding of the mechanical aspects of producing speech sounds. This is often referred to as speech mechanics. Good speech mechanics creates good speech hygiene.​​​​ If you are not already investing an effort in the area of speech hygiene, you can plan to start immediately.

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